Elkhart Lake, WI (Sunday, August 4, 2024) — It was a very happy return to the podium for Paul Miller Racing this weekend at Road America, taking a P2 finish and standing on the rostrum for the first time since the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season opener at Daytona.
Starting seventh in the hands of Madison Snow, the No. 1 iHeartRadio BMW M4 GT3 machine drove into podium contention during the first stint, but a yellow-marred race made the winning strategy difficult to predict for the Paul Miller Racing team.
The No. 1 fell as low as ninth during the opening stanzas of the race, but was up to fifth by the time Bryan Sellers took over just past the halfway point. Sellers would continue to march through the field, working his way up to second in the closing 45 minutes of the race.
Though he pushed to try and get around the Ferrari ahead—or make them run out of fuel—the No. 1 would cross the line second.
“I’m really proud of this whole team and the way they’ve persevered over the last couple of races to get us to this amazing result today,” Paul Miller Racing team owner, Paul Miller, said.
“It’s such a good reward for everyone for all of their hard work to be back on the podium and hopefully we can carry that momentum into the last few races of the season.”
“That didn’t suck!” PMR team manager, Mitchell Simmons, added.
“Drivers did a great job. Crew did a great job. We found ourselves in a position where we had a decent race car—certainly not the fastest—but we really worked to capitalize on the strengths we had. We had straight line speed, so we basically set the car up to be fast in a straight line.
“We got lucky on some yellows, and unlucky on others, but we kept a very clean race and minimized our mistakes on a day when others didn’t manage to do that. The pendulum has swung back in our favor and I know all these guys are happy to bring home some hardware.”
The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship is back in action August 23-25 at VIRginia International Raceway for the sole GT-only round of the 2024 season.
Bryan Sellers
“It’s nice to be back on the podium. We’ve felt like we’ve been so close these last two races. I continue to say that to be on the podium in GTD Pro you have to have really good races and everything needs to go your way and when it doesn’t, you have to find ways to turn that adversity towards you. We had a couple of bad yellows today, but everyone stayed calm, everyone on the stand stayed calm, we all stayed focused on what we needed to do and we were able to fight our way back from seventh into a podium position. For a while there, it looked like maybe we had enough for the Ferrari, that maybe they were going to run out of fuel—but today they were just a little bit better. And that’s okay! It’s a good program and we made them work for it. I’m super happy to get this monkey off our back and get back on the podium. We just need to try and build for the remainder of the season. We should have some good races coming up and I’m looking forward to it.”
Madison Snow
“Back on the podium here! I think what really did it for us, for the Paul Miller Team, was fighting the entire race. We had a little bit of up-and-down through the race, and with not knowing where exactly we would finish with how the strategies played out. But, the team stayed in it the entire time and really fought for it the entire time. That’s what got us this podium finish, that’s what got us this second place. It’s great to be back on the podium. The crew did a great job, as always, with prepping the car and the pit stops. I love working with these Paul Miller guys. Excited for the rest of the year.”
